Pixelsocks: Can you give me the Shank spiel?

Jeff Agala

Jeff: Shank is a cinematic action brawler, developed by Klei Entertainment, that’s published by EA. It stars a character named Shank who uses multiple weapons. We’re not saying much about the story, but it’s a revenge story that takes place in an urban setting.

Pixelsocks: Can you tell me why you picked the art style?

Jeff: We definitely wanted to go for a graphic novel feel. I come from the animation industry, so we basically are inspired by the great illustrators like Jack Kirby and Frank Miller. We’re trying to go for that vein of art, with a lot more detail than normal animation–a lot more realistic proportions than you would consider to be super cartoony.

Pixelsocks: The sprites look jointed; does that give you a better range of animation?

Jeff: We actually don’t have joints in our animation system. We do all the key posing in Sketchbook, and then the animators color and bring that into Flash. As you know, Flash doesn’t have a skeleton system or frame binding, so we actually animate every single transition.

Pixelsocks: That must have been a lot of work.

Jeff: It is a lot of work, but our entire team, including myself, came from television animation. We used to pump out an episode a month, so animation is our thing. This mass amount of animation is a normal feat for us. It’s still hard to do, but we’ve done it for years.

Pixelsocks: How do you think that your television background has influenced the game?

Jeff: It’s in the cinematics and the presentation of the game. I think the animation of the game speaks for itself. It’s very fluid. I’ve directed and composed all the cinematics so there’s a very movie-like feel to it all. Our presentation: that’s what we drive at.

Pixelsocks: It’s probably safe to say at this point that the brawler is a pretty time-worn genre. What sets Shank apart?

Jeff: We spent a lot of time with the controls, and I think that the characters are deep. You’ll be able to play with the characters and develop the story. We spent a lot of time building up the story, and integrating it well into the gameplay, as well as making a great combat system.

Pixelsocks: So tell me about the combat system.

Jeff: The way that the combat system works right now is you have your shanks, you have a secondary weapon, which in this demo is a chainsaw, and a tertiary weapon, which is presently guns. Each one has a full combo set, just by pressing the button repeatedly. However, when you link weapons together, you cycle faster among them, giving you faster and longer combos.

Pixelsocks: So how far along in is development cycle is Shank?

Jeff: We’re looking to launch this summer, so we have a few more months left to go.

Pixelsocks: So are you down to polish at this point?

Jeff: I wouldn’t say that, but we’re not really talking about the state the game is in.

Pixelsocks: What platforms are you releasing for?

Jeff: XBLA, PSN, and PC.

Pixelsocks: Not to spoil anything, but can you tell me something that no one else knows about the game yet?

Jaime Cheng: It totally runs at 60 fps. I was adamant about that. We actually put it down to 30 at one point, just to see. The programmers said, “no one’s gonna notice.” So they put it down to 30, and all the designers immediately said, “I don’t know why, but the game feels crappy right now.” So, that was very obvious. The animation runs at 30, though.

Interview transcribed by Kate McKiernan

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Tags:   Excellence in Visual Art Nominee · GDC · gdc 2010 · IGF · IGF 2010 · Jamie Cheng · Jeff AgalaNo Comments

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